Narrative And Composition

10.1163/ej.9789004116740.i-331.6

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Chapter Summary

This chapter discusses some key points of the Apocryphon of John, including authorship and narrative voices; the revelatory monologue: narrative structure, plot, voices; dissonant voices, consonant models; and description of a vision followed by the seers reaction (dilemma). It proposes another hypothesis about the status, function, and meaning of the frame narrative in the Apocryphon of John. From a form-analytical perspective, all three segments of Johns actiondistress, failed inventio, increased perplexityare conventional signals of a forthcoming revelatory vision. Two different standards appear to have been applied in the Apocryphons use of the Timaeus. The Apocryphon comes close to the works by those Gnostics who had so much infuriated Plotinus for falsifying Platos manner of representing the fabrication of the universe.